


Honesty

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s02e12 The Drop-In, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-12
Updated: 2005-04-12
Packaged: 2019-05-15 19:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14796926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: Friends are honest with each other.





	Honesty

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Honesty**

**by: Francesca**

**Pairing(s):** CJ/Sam  
**Category(s):** Post-Ep/Romance  
**Rating:** YTEEN  
**Disclaimer:** I don’t own the characters (I wish) but am just borrowing them for a while ( I’d like to keep Sam – me and a few thousand others) I promise I’ll put them back afterwards.  
**Summary:** Friends are honest with each other.  
**Spoiler:** _The Drop In_.  
**Author's Note:** This can be read in sequence with ‘Confession’ and ‘Unsaid’ or as a stand alone. 

Sam drank silently, Toby just sat and watched. 

The silence stretched. 

Finally Sam got, a little unsteadily to his feet, Toby got up with him. 

“I’ll go hail you a cab” Toby said. 

“What if I want to walk?” 

“You’re in no state to walk” Toby stated bluntly and walked out of the White House Mess, by the time Sam had made it to the gates Toby was standing at the kerb by a waiting Taxi. Much as Sam hated to admit it Toby had a knack for getting cab drivers to stop for him. 

Sam opened the back door and got in shutting it in Toby’s face. Toby looked at the driver who nodded; Toby slapped the roof and walked off down the street. Sam looked back as the cab moved away to watch him recede in the rear window. 

He turned and looked at the driver “ ’S okay” the cabbie told him “your friend told me where you’re going”. 

Straight to hell thought Sam and I don’t think he’s my friend either. But what he looked at the driver “what happens if I want to go someplace else?” 

“Trips already been paid for” 

Sam rummaged in his pockets and came up with some crumpled notes; looking at them in the light of passing streetlights he tossed a $20 into the passenger seat. The driver’s eyes flicked to it and back to Sam in the mirror. 

“Now this is where I want to go……….” 

C J sat on her sofa her legs curled up beneath her going over briefing papers for the next morning. You can take the woman out of the office she thought ruefully but you can’t take the office out of the woman. She pushed her hair back from her face and pushed her glasses further up her nose. She needed to get her head around the polling numbers before tomorrow’s briefing, that and the 101 things around those polling numbers that she could possibly be asked about. She looked at her laptop, the pile of open books and papers on her coffee table and thought about just asking Leo to order her a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica it would take less time, but she wasn’t sure it would qualify as a necessary expense. Then again considering some of the things which were considered a necessary expense in the White House…she scribbled a note in the margin of her legal pad. 

At that moment the banging on her front door began, very loud, very insistent banging. She looked at her pager and mobile phone. Nothing – couldn’t have been an emergency surely one of those would have gone off first. The banging continued and she sighed, unfolded herself from the sofa, put down her pad and went to open the front door. 

“What are you trying to do, break it down?” she started to ask as she opened it and stopped. 

Leaning on her door frame was Sam, a very disheveled and by the look and smell of him, slightly drunk Sam. 

“Sam?” 

“When did you know?” he demanded 

C.J looked at him “Come in” 

“When did you know?” 

“Sam it’s quarter to eleven, I’m not saying we’re not going to have this conversation, I’m just saying lets have it inside okay”. 

Sam looked at her for a moment and walked in and she shut the door behind him. He followed her into the living room and sat on the sofa, he looked up at her with that piercing blue gaze, “When did you know C.J” 

She looks around but the other chairs are covered in books and papers and she can’t be bothered to move anything so sits on the other end of the sofa, he turns to face her so he can watch her face. 

Part of him as always admired her grace, her elegance, her essential ‘C.J-ness’ he’s never met anyone like her and he loves her, though he hopes it doesn’t show. That’s why he needs this question answered, why it’s so important to him. Why it hurt so much when he met her walking through the West Wing and found out she’d known. He watches her gather herself, knows Toby’s her friend the same way Josh is his, why he needs to know if she’s his friend now. 

“Toby told me there was going to be a speech, he told me there was going to be a drop-in “Friends are honest with each other” and he didn’t tell me you didn’t know. Then he shipped me out to New York to tell a guy I like that he cant perform at the Will Rogers dinner because of the joke he told at the fund raiser that time”. 

Sam lowers his head for a moment and she can’t see his face, then he looks up at her “Corey Sykes?” 

She nods. “And I got sent because I know Corey and we like each other, and I felt like a heel. I had to say don’t perform because it could hurt us despite the fact he’s stood up for us and by us and despite me having to drop Toby’s message on him from a great height he still supports us. Even if he doesn’t like us very much just now”. She drags her hands though her hair. “I don’t like myself just now”. 

She looks at him earnestly and he searches her face “I didn’t know you didn’t know about the drop in Sam. I swear to God I didn’t know you didn’t know and Toby didn’t tell me you didn’t know. You know how I hate being out of the loop, I wouldn’t have done it to you”. 

He sits back on the sofa; she’s being honest with him. C.J’s like Josh if you know what you’re looking for she’s got a lousy poker face, but he can’t see any lie in her eyes and he’s looked and looked hard. He sighs then. 

C.J looks at him from her end of the sofa, all the anger’s gone out of Sam and he just looks tired now, as though the last 48 hours have hit him all at once, she’s flown to New York and back in the same time and he was working on that speech before she left, she knows how he feels. He looks at her mournfully “They didn’t stand” 

Her heart aches for him. Sam puts 110% into everything he does. He’s a perfectionist and it’s one of the things she secretly loves about him. 

“The difference between a good speech and a great speech is the energy with which the audience comes to their feet at the end. Is it polite? Is it a chore? Are they standing up because their boss just stood up? No, you want it to come from their socks. They didn’t stand tonight”. He shakes his head sadly “They didn’t stand”. 

She looks at him, there’s a strange look on his face as he looks at her, one she can’t decipher but she understands being tired and dejected, she understands giving something your best shot and then discovering someone’s cut you off at the knees. 

She reaches over and hugs him; he wraps his arms around her and holds on as though for dear life, as though she’s the last rope thrown to a drowning man. If she could see the look on his face as he leans his head on her shoulder she’d know what Sam’s hiding from her, but she cant see and Sam silently thanks heaven for that. He loves her, and can never tell her. This is the woman who turned down Danny Concannon because of ‘conflict of interest’ despite the fact she cared for him, something that had killed Sam to watch. He couldn’t tell her because there were 101 reasons why it could never happen, and the West Wing already had Josh and Donna did it need Sam and C.J even if she felt the same. He shook his head, feeling her hair brush his cheek as he did so…in vino veritas, ‘truth in wine’ but not that much truth or at least not yet. 

She draws back from him and he reluctantly lets go. 

“Sam do you want to stay here tonight?” 

He looks at her sharply and the gesture makes his head swim. The anger and adrenalin that has powered him through the last few hours is gone and now the tiredness and the alcohol have hit. He’s never stayed at C.J’s though they’ve all hung out there, he doesn’t think anyone has and somewhere inside a tiny flame of hope flares. 

“There’s the spare room, or the sofa. I promise it’s comfortable” she smiles ruefully “I know from experience”. He can imagine her falling asleep on it in the middle of a particularly dry briefing paper and he smiles, he’s done that too. 

“That would be great” he admits “I’ll take the sofa”. 

“Are you sure you don’t want the spare bed?” 

“If I’m honest I don’t think I could make the stairs” he confesses. 

“Kick your shoes off and I’ll go grab you some blankets and pillows. I might have to stay up and work for a while longer, would that disturb you?” 

He shakes his head. 

By the time she returns his shoes and socks are under the coffee table and his somewhat creased suit jacket is over the back of a chair. She puts the pillows at one end of the sofa. 

“Come on then, kick up your feet”. 

Wordlessly he obeys, stretching out and she puts the blanket over him and tucks him in. He turns slightly so he can watch her as she switches the main light off and one of the lamps by a chair on, lifts a pile of books from a chair and sits down. She picks up the briefing paper and notepad and pushes her hair back behind her ear and looks up to see him watching her. 

“Get some sleep Sam” she says quietly “I’ll make coffee in the morning”. 

He closes his eyes and falls into sleep one hand hugging the pillow. Every so often C.J looks up from her papers and watches him sleep. What he doesn’t know, but she does is that she will watch over him until morning. 


End file.
